Last Call: Poems On Alcoholism, Addiction, & Deliv

Sarah Gorham is the author of two collections of poetry, "Don't Go Back to Sleep" (Galileo Press, 1989) and "The Tension Zone" (FourWay Books, 1996). Her work has appeared widely in such places as "The Nation, Antaeus, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Grand Street, The Missouri Review, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review," and "Poetry Northwest," where in 1990 she won the Carolyn Kizer Award. She has received grants from the Kentucky State Arts Council, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Delaware State Arts Council, and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, She is Editor-in-Chief and President of Sarabande Books, Inc.

Jeffrey Skinner has published three collections of poetry, "Late Stars" (Weslyan University Press, 1985), "A Guide to Forgetting" (Graywolf Press, 1988) and "The Company of Heaven" (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992). His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines including "The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Nation, The Georgia Review," and "Poetry," He has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Howard Foundation, and several state arts councils. He is also a playwright, and two of his plays were finalists in the Eugene O'Neil Theater Conference competition. He is currently Director of Creative Writing and Professor of English at the University of Louisville.

"People whose lives are changed by alcohol and addiction have a special knowledge of the world's unsafety and unpredictability. They become intimate with chaos and shame, know well the consequences and limits of human control. Ordinary language may be inadequate to depict the intensities of their longing, grief, and desire for life. The poemsin this anthology, edited by Sarabande Books' co-founders, Gorham and Skinner, rightly feel hard won-as if the language had been hauled, chiseled, sieved, and saved to let the voice contain, express, and transform difficult experience. The poems possess an unusual authority, making room for that undefined darkness, the between, from which meaning sometimes arises."-"Poetry Calendar," New York, New York

""Last Call" is a deeply moving collection of poems not only about the a